I open my mouth to defy him, to tell him he can’t control me, but the memory of Evilin’s rages, of the futility of fighting a force so much stronger than myself, silences me.What’s the point?I’ve just traded one cage for another. One monster for another.
And then I remember. The conversation I overheard. I’m taking the girl. The realization hits me with the force of a physical blow. This isn't a rescue. This is a transaction. I am property. A debt paid.
My breath catches, coming in short, panicked gasps. The walls of the room seem to be closing in. Tears blur my vision, hot and stinging. I can’t breathe. The corset is gone, but I am suffocating all the same.
“Wynter. Breathe.” His voice is a sharp command, cutting through the fog of my panic. “Look at me. Focus on my voice.”
I shake my head, curling into a ball, trying to make myself smaller.
“Look at me,” he says again, more forcefully this time. His hands cup my face, and the contact is an electric shock. I jolt as if I’ve been burned, my eyes flying open to meet his. The intensity I see there, the raw, possessive hunger mixed with that infuriating flicker of concern, is too much.
“Don’t make me tie you to this bed and force them down your throat,” he warns, his voice a low growl. And I know, with a chilling certainty, that he means it.
Fear clogs my throat. I look away, wiping furiously at my tears. I fled one prison only to be trapped in another, more opulent one.
His grip on my face softens, his thumb brushing away a tear on my cheek. The gesture is so unexpectedly gentle it startles me more than his threat did.
“I know you’re scared,” he murmurs, his voice dropping lower, becoming a hypnotic, dangerous purr. “But I promise you, no one will ever hurt you again. Not like she did. You just have to trust me.”
Trust?The word is so foreign, so absurd, I almost laugh.How can I trust the man who bought me like an object? How can I trust the monster who holds my life in his hands?
But as I look into his piercing blue eyes, a traitorous, desperate part of me wants to. Because for the first time in a very long time, I feel something other than fear. I feel seen. And that, I realize, might be the most dangerous feeling of all.
Seven
Kaden
Sheflinches.
It’s a small, violent jerk of her body, a recoiling so profound it’s like I’ve struck her. My hand, which had beenreaching for her, freezes in the air. The space between us crackles with her terror.
I am a man who deals in fear. I cultivate it. I use it as a tool, a weapon, a currency. I have seen it in the eyes of my enemies, in the faces of men who owe me money, in the trembling hands of rivals who have crossed my path. It is a familiar, satisfying sight.
This is not that.
This is the terror of a victim. It’s the instinctive, deeply ingrained fear of a creature that has only ever known pain from an outstretched hand. It’s a fear that expects a blow, that anticipates cruelty. And it triggers something deep inside me, a phantom echo of a pain I thought I had buried under two decades of violence and power. The ghost of a lit cigarette on a boy’s skin. The memory of a boot pressing down on a small back.
A muscle feathers in my jaw. The rage that flashes through me is no longer directed at her defiance, but at the person who taught her this fear. Evilin. I will add this sin to her tally.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Wynter,” I say again, my voice lower now, rougher.
“Why am I here?” she demands, her voice trembling but laced with a sliver of steel that I find infuriatingly appealing. “Where is ‘here’?”
I give her the truth, parceled out in small, digestible pieces. My compound. My land. The Deadly Seven. Each word is meant to convey the totality of her new reality, the inescapable nature of her cage. But instead of dawning acceptance, I see the color drain from her face. A wave of nausea seems to hit her, and she collapses back against the pillows, her breath catching.
The sight of her distress, her genuine physical sickness from fear, throws me off balance. I cross the room in two strides, my instinct to control the situation overriding everything else. I sit on the edge of the bed. She scrambles away from me, and I seeher flinch again, her eyes squeezing shut as if bracing for an impact.
That’s when I see it. The faint, yellowing bruise high on her cheekbone, almost hidden by her hair. A mark I missed before. A mark from a hand, not a branch.
The red haze descends. I default to what I know. Dominance. Control.
“Doc said to take these when you wake up,” I say, my voice tight, gesturing to the pills.
“No,” she bites out. “I’m fine.”
“It wasn’t a request.”
She opens her mouth to argue, but then something inside her seems to break. The fight drains out of her, replaced by a bleak, hollow resignation. And then, the reality of her situation seems to crash down on her all at once. Her eyes go wide, unfocused. She’s not just a girl who ran through the woods anymore. She’s a captive. In my house. In my bed. The full, crushing weight of what that means hits her, and she shatters.
